Contact wheels may be used to machine objects such as fan blades of gas turbine engines. For example, a contact wheel may be used in conjunction with an abrasive belt to linish a wide chord fan blade (WCFB) to remove a surface layer that is formed during a preceding hot superplastic forming (SPF) process.
Contact wheels have flat circumferential surfaces which may be unable to access concave features of an object (such as the root fillet of a fan blade). Currently, an operator may handle the machining apparatus to manually move the contact wheel against the object to machine such features on the object. However, such manual handling of the machining apparatus may present health and safety risks. For example, machining a fan blade of a gas turbine engine may produce titanium dust which is a fire hazard. Furthermore, manually handling the machining apparatus may cause an industrial injury such as hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) (also known as vibration white finger (VWF)).